It looks like Xerox Corp. has its summer sales signs up and they are screaming with colour. Last month, the printer giant announced two new office single pass colour printers, which will replace three previous models as part of the company’s consolidation and colour push strategies.
Xerox has announced the Phaser 8200, single pass solid ink printer, which replaces the existing Phaser 860 product. The 8200 offers a 300MHz processor that provides a first-page-out time of nine seconds, as well as 16 pages per minute (ppm). The company also announced the Phaser 6200, a more feature-rich single pass colour laser printer, which is set to replace the previous Phaser 750 and Phaser 1235 models. The 6200 has a 500MHz PowerPC processor, prints 16 ppm and offers 2400 dpi resolution.
According to Xerox’s Mike Kovalski, product marketing manager in Wilsonville, Ore., single pass technology is simply just that. Whereas with other competitive printers the colours cyan, magenta, yellow and black are separately imaged, single pass technology allows for all four colours to be printed on a page at once.
Kovalski explained that the Phaser 8200 solid ink printer takes a traditional printing press approach to laying colour on a page.
“There is basically a drum inside of the printer, and we image directly onto that drum,” he said. “We basically spray the ink onto a drum and then take the media and transfix the image. It is an extremely simple process.”
He said that by comparison, Xerox has added ease of use capabilities into its 6200 laser printer. The 6200 uses the traditional laser process of electric photography in order to image an area, apply toner to the area, and then run paper through the printer thereby producing the desired image.
However, the technology itself is not new. What is new, Kovalski continued is the pricing model. For years, colour has carried the stigma of being too slow and outrageously expensive for the average office environment. Xerox has positioned the two new offerings – the 8200 at $2,799 and the 6200 at $3,699 – as an “affordable reality” for offices of all sizes.
And it would appear as though the message is seeping through. For Marie of the Incarnation elementary school in Brantford, Ont., colour printing has in the past been something of a pipe dream from an affordability standpoint. Prior to the Phaser 860 model, the school’s only option was inkjet, and although these printers were fairly inexpensive to purchase, the cost of cartridges for simple monochrome printing was beyond its means.
“The desire for colour has always been there,” said Stephen Charbonneau, principal of Marie of the Incarnation. “The problem in schools is that the colour that has been available has been prohibitively expensive to run especially in volume.”
Charbonneau explained that when he came on as the school’s principal, he was looking specifically for printers that would be able to handle requests from the school’s 350 students and 20 staff members with relatively high output speeds.
He said that the new 8200 has improved speed and makes is an enticing model for a school environment.
“The other thing is the entry price is considerably reduced, which makes it a sweet spot for schools,” he continued. “To get into the model with networking capabilities and duplexing (used to be) around $7,000. Now it is around $3,000. They have reduced the cost of colour and that is really attractive for schools.”
For more information on the Xerox Phaser 8200 and Phaser 6200, visit the company on the Web at www.xerox.com.
